Nevermind your position on health care — how nervous were you when you tied the knot?

In response to Brides Decide, a new get-out-the-vote Web site aimed at brides and sponsored by the Knot, the Nest and the Wedding Channel, Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet asks: At what point is it no longer an admirable attempt at targeting female voters but an insult to womankind?

Um, I think this IS that point. Since when are brides their own voting bloc? What in the world would possibly make the political concerns of brides so unique from the political concerns of any other women that they need their own political Web site?

Wait – scratch that question. The Knot et al. know the difference — brides need to pick out political candidates in the same way the pick out table settings!

The site is designed to educate using a one-click, comparison shopping model aimed to simplify the research process for this busy audience alongside fun, relatable editorial about the presidential candidates (like how nervous they were the day they tied the knot).

Apparently brides are also especially concerned by “who’s pro-life and who’s pro-choice” (this dominates the front page of the site) and stuck in 2004 (gay marriage is sited by BridesDecide as being one of the most important issues in the election). The Web site also claimes to cover “virtually every important topic in the 2008 election,” every important topic apparently limited to abortion, education, energy, health care, immigration, Iraq, gay marriage, women’s rights and taxes. Tracy writes:

I am so very, very confused by this attempt at getting young women to vote via summaries of presidential candidates’ platforms alongside detailed descriptions and photos of their weddings. … As a co-worker suggested, this is as clear a sign you’ll get that the wedding industry is out of control (and its friggin’ mind). It isn’t targeting married women versus single women, after all. It’s reducing all young women to the sort who are too busy getting teary-eyed and blubbery flipping through a wedding magazine — either recalling their own special day or lamenting that their day has yet to come — to thoroughly examine the presidential candidates.

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4 Responses

Wow. That’s pretty amazing. Aren’t voting blocs supposed to be segments of people with common traits? What do brides have in common other than planning ridiculously overpriced events?

Since being a bride revolves around an event that occurs and is then over, how is a bridal bloc stable enough to have any effect on an election? Let’s start Grad Students Decide or Metro Riders Decide. That makes a much sense as Brides Decide.

My alarm bells went off with the first sentence of Brides Decide’s website, the bit about how this website’s audience are the “savvy women” who will make history with how they influence the next election. It won’t be some large swath of Latino voters or large swath of single women or large swath of any other defined blocs of like-minded voters that has an impact. No, it will be brides who can take the credit, the very people who are so busy with their weddings they haven’t a moment to spare for researching the candidates wanting to lead this great nation from sources not set up in the same vein as Crate&Barrel’s online store. Wow.

I know, this response is a bit drippy with sarcasm. But, there’s a sadness behind the sarcasm, because I also know, as some of the commentary to Tracy Clark-Flory’s piece indicates, that many voters don’t mind when someone caters to their self-absorption. For a some segment of our nation’s population Brides Decide is not an insult. Instead, by taking information about the candidates, and cutting them up into bitty bitty bites and putting them onto pretty pretty matchy matchy settings, the website providing a much needed service to a hungry market.